Sir Isaac Newton, Wax relief portrait

Description

By Caspar Bernhard Hardy, Cologne circa 1780/85 , 19.5cm x 14cm, 32.5cm x 27cm incl. frame

The inscription on the pillar behind Newton quotes Alexander Pope’s epigram on Sir Isaac Newton:

Nature and Nature’s Laws
Lay hid in night.
God said Let Newton be
And all was light

In the last third of the 18th century, the art of wax sculpture established itself in Cologne in Germany. Its most important representative was Caspar Bernhard Hardy (1726–1819). A clergyman, who served as vicar at Cologne Cathedral throughout his life, he had taught himself the necessary skills and techniques. He dabbled in various artistic techniques, excelling in oil painting and in the production of models for bronze castings. Together with his brother Johann Wilhelm (1720–1799), a pharmacist, he developed and built physical instruments. However, it was his small-format wax sculptures that made him famous. Contemporaries, including renowned nobles and learned collectors, praised the charm of his designs, the ingenuity of the physiognomies and the precision of the modelling. He embossed his figures, which were set in glazed box frames, using moulded
and individually reworked heads and limbs, and applied clothing created or cut from coloured wax sheets. Due to the combination of serially produced elements with individually modelled parts, his work consists of a repertoire that is manageable in terms of motifs, but extremely varied in detail.